• How society has been changing the composition of Earth’s atmosphere over the last century

• How Earth’s climate has warmed and otherwise changed during the same period

• Why scientists believe global warming is due to changes in atmospheric composition via the greenhouse effect

• How global warming fits into the context of other climate mechanisms and variability

• Probable future climate change

Student Presentations

In addition to participating in class lectures and discussions, students will have the opportunity to do some research on recent findings in climate change. Each student will give a brief presentation that contains a summary of a selected paper from the current scientific literature and may also include an analysis of observational data and climate model output. One set of student presentations will be before the midterm and the second set will be after the midterm. A list of possible topics/papers from which students may choose will be made available for each half of the semester.

The presentations should include, as appropriate:

• Authors and Affiliations

• Data and Methods

• Hypothesis

• Experiments

• Results

• Conclusions

• Relevance, Importance, Impact (student’s opinion)

Lecture Notes

(N.B. Lecture notes will be posted as they become available. The order and titles of lectures may depart from the listing shown.)

• Introductory Lecture

• Observed Changes in the Oceans and Cryosphere

• Observed Changes in the Atmosphere

• Observed Changes in Atmospheric Composition

• The Greenhouse Effect

• Radiative Forcing Since 1750

• Understanding and Attributing Climate Change

• Paleoclimate

• Climate Sensitivity

• Evaluating Climate Models

• Near-Term Climate Change Projections

• Long-Term Climate Change Projections & Sea Level Change

• Climate Phenomena & Atlas of Climate Change Projections

Problem Sets

• Problem Set 1

• Problem Set 2

Climate Dynamics Graduate Courses

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